Chevron today stood by its plans to develop Wheatstone as a standalone project from Woodside’s Pluto Liquefied natural gas development.

Chevron Australia’s managing director Roy Krzywosinski told Reuters at the sidelines of an industry event that the port of Onslow - not Pluto - offered a "good geographic position" to process Wheatstone gas.

A blueprint of the project calls for two trains handling around 8 million tonnes of gas annually.

Krzywosinski said Wheatstone was an "ace" in Chevron's Australian portfolio, estimating 25 trillion to 35 trillion cubic feet of gas sits in the field and nearby regions.

As earlier reported in Upstream newspaper, FEED tender for Wheatstone is now under way with KBR leading the race against Technip, WorleyParsons and a joint venture between Mustang Engineering and Fluor.

Production facilities include a drilling platform to be installed in 150 metres of water at Wheatstone and a huge concrete gravity structure for gas processing in 100 metres of water on the Iago field. Gas and condensate will be exported via two pipelines to an onshore plant about 220 kilometres away.